Edinburgh Critical Studies in Renaissance Culture

This is a series of solo-authored monographs on the interpretation of Renaissance culture, focusing primarily on the English Renaissance, but including work in a range of vernacular languages, as well as work on the reception and transformation of the Greco-Roman literary, political and intellectual heritage.

To date, disciplinary divisions have tended to insulate critical interpretations of material culture from those of political and intellectual history, or of legal and political culture from the literary, or of religious discourse from, say, the development of economic thought. While New Historicism encouraged a turn to the material and social in literary interpretation, the promise of a 'poetics of culture' has been eclipsed by the Shakespeare industry, which continues to naturalize and universalize the object of study.